Khadak — the term is a Mongolian loan word from Tibetan meaning ceremonial scarf — is a film directed by Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth. Brosens had already made three documentaries about Mongolia when he and Woodworth filmed Khadak, which began as a documentary about commercial aviation, and then transformed itself into a piece of magical realism about Mongolian shamanism. “Motivating the film are not only the complex economic and political manifestations of change,” the directors say, “but also the more evasive and intangible spiritual ones.”

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The ayahuasca ceremony can be a powerful auditory experience — the sounds of the jungle in the night; the hushed breathy whistling, the singing of the icaros, the magical songs of the ayahuasquero; the rhythmic shaking of the shacapa, the leaf-bundle rattle; the auditory hallucinations, the synesthesias induced by the ayahuasca drink itself. Musicians who have participated in these ceremonies have sometimes tried to capture this distinctive soundscape in their music, often with the idea of conveying, too, something of the psychospiritual effects of their experience. I thought I would share three examples.

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Joe Rogan is a stand-up comic and comic actor. He appeared as a character in the sitcom NewsRadio, as a host on the reality show Fear Factor, and — with an apparently extensive martial arts background — as a color commentator for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. His comedic style is iconoclastic and confrontational. He has frequently accused other comedians of plagiarism, and has publicly espoused a number of conspiracy theories regarding the Apollo moon landing, the Kennedy assassination, and the attack on the World Trade Center. He has challenged Wesley Snipes to a mixed martial arts combat. He has been an occasional guest on the Mancow Show and the Howard Stern show; he has a sensory deprivation tank in his basement. He has also — and this is probably no surprise by now — been deeply influenced by the theories of Terence McKenna and Rick Strassman about DMT.

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Interestingly, two superhero comic characters have been, more or less, shamans — the Canadian superhero Shaman (Marvel Comics) and the Mexican superhero Chamán (Mambo Comics). Now you can read their exciting stories.

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Painter Rick Harlow first came to Colombia in 1987 to live along the Caqueta River, near the town of La Pedrera. He spent half his time painting, the other half hunting and fishing with the men of the Yucuna people, “trying to be a productive member of society.” In 1988, toward the end of his stay, he participated in the yurupari, a five-day male initiation rite, involving fasting, drinking ayahuasca, and bathing in cold river water.

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Even if you haven’t heard Marshall Arisman’s name, you have seen his work, if not in a gallery then in Time or Esquire or Rolling Stone. It is unmistakable — dark, disturbing, vaguely paranoid. “Hs work rivets the eye and the mind,” writes novelist Paul Theroux. “It is direct and seems unambiguous, but there is inevitably shadow behind it.” Arisman paints and draws … well, creatures, animals, vague hybrids of human and animal, humans as animals — what one reviewer has called “enthralling characters both dangerous and vulnerable, violent and sublime.”

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Byron Metcalf is a drummer, percussionist, and recording engineer who also has a Ph.D. in transpersonal psychology. That’s just the beginning. He has been intensively involved in research on consciousness transformation and spiritual development. He has trained, studied, and worked with shamans and healers from many parts of the world. In particular, he worked with South American shamans from two traditions — don Américo Yábar, an Andean huachumero, and don José Campos, an ayahuasquero currently associated with the Takiwasi Center in Tarapoto.

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Apparently a major cultural revolution has been taking place right under my nose, and I didn’t even know it was happening. La Tigresa del Oriente is the stage name adopted by Peruvian hairdresser and makeup artist Judith Bustos. Her videos on YouTube have become wildly popular. Her video entitled Nuevo Amanecer, New Dawn, had been watched, when I checked this morning, 3,396,779 times.

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I have written before about Dr. Rick Strassman and his book, DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Now the book is being made into a movie. The documentary will include interviews with all of the DMT and ayahuasca heavy hitters — anthropologist Marlene Dobkin de Ríos, visionary artist Alex Grey, psychiatrist Charles Grob, psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, author Graham Hancock, anthropologist Luis Eduardo Luna, ethnopharmacologist Dennis McKenna, poet Dale Pendell, cognitive psychologist Benny Shanon, and many more, including, of course, Rick Strassman, who is also the coproducer.

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In many ways, Terence McKenna was a performance artist. With his distinctive voice and self-deprecating humor, he could make even his goofiest ideas sound compelling. One of his great performances took place on February 26 and 27, 1993, at the Transmission Theater, San Francisco, in a multimedia techno-rave event called Alien Dreamtime, which combined McKenna’s improvised meditations with the neo-psychedelic visuals of Rose X, and ambient techno improvisations by Space Time Continuum and didgeriduista Stephen Kent.

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